Asklemmy

43914 readers

938 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

104

Using a Firefox fork makes any difference? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by NONE_dc@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

60 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Well, Mozilla seems to be making some pretty questionable decisions, So I'm considering switching browsers for the third (Is it the third?) time. The thing is, I really like the way Firefox works, so I've been trying out the more famous Forks like Waterfox and Librewolf, although I'm going for Floorp. However, I'm wondering: is using a fork enough? I mean, they are Forks maintained by other people, but is there a chance that whatever Mozilla does to Firefox could affect those Forks? Should I jump to a totally different browser like Vivaldi?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] lapislazuli@feddit.org 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Can you give an example for this user tracking? I'm using firefox and I can't think of anything that isn't opt-in.

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Nothing of this is opt-in:

By default, Mozilla collects […] information about the number of open tabs and windows or number of webpages visited. […] The data collected is associated with a randomly generated identifier that is unique to each Firefox client.

and

Firefox by default sends data about what features you use in Firefox to Leanplum, our mobile marketing vendor […] Leanplum tracks events such as when a user loads bookmarks, opens new tab, opens a pocket trending story, clears data, saves a password and login, takes a screenshot, downloads media, interacts with search URL or signs into a Firefox Account.

and

[Leanplum collects] certain information, which may include your browser’s Internet Protocol (IP) address, your browser type, the nature of the device from which you are visiting the Service[…], the identifier for any handheld or mobile device that you may be using, the Web site that you visited immediately prior to accessing any Web-based Service, the actions you take on our Service, […] We also may collect information regarding your interaction with e-mail messages, such as whether you opened, clicked on, or forwarded a message.

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/the-firefox-browser-is-a-privacy-nightmare-on-desktop-and-mobile/

[–] lapislazuli@feddit.org 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Thanks, I didn't know that all this stuff is enabled by default. They don't even care to inform their users when you install firefox...

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 month ago

You can’t even turn all of this off via UI, but need to use about:config or user.js (the later needs to be explicitly enabled via about:config first).

Here’s my setup (except some specific settings based on my personal preferences that are not related to privacy).

// Do not leak URLs, IPs, etc. to external services
user_pref('browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled', false);
user_pref('browser.safebrowsing.phishing.enabled', false);
user_pref('network.trr.mode', 5); // DoH explicitly off
user_pref('security.OCSP.enabled', 0);
user_pref('browser.contentblocking.category', 'custom');
user_pref('app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled', false);
user_pref('browser.urlbar.trending.featureGate', false);

// Disable hidden extensions
user_pref('extensions.pocket.enabled', false);
user_pref('extensions.screenshots.disabled', true);

// Remove new tab spam
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsoredTopSites', false);
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories', false);
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.topsites', false);

// Disable telemetry
user_pref('datareporting.policy.dataSubmissionEnabled', false);
user_pref('datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.unified', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.server', 'data:,');
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.archive.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.newProfilePing.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.shutdownPingSender.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.updatePing.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.bhrPing.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.firstShutdownPing.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.coverage.opt-out', true);
user_pref('toolkit.coverage.opt-out', true);
user_pref('toolkit.coverage.endpoint.base', '');
user_pref('browser.ping-centre.telemetry', false);
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.telemetry', false);
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.telemetry', false);
user_pref('breakpad.reportURL', '');
user_pref('browser.tabs.crashReporting.sendReport', false);
user_pref('browser.crashReports.unsubmittedCheck.autoSubmit2', false);
user_pref('app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled', false);
user_pref('app.normandy.enabled', false);
user_pref('app.normandy.api_url', '');

// Disable AI bullshit
user_pref('browser.ml.enable', false);
user_pref('browser.ml.chat.enabled', false);
user_pref('browser.ml.chat.shortcuts', false);
user_pref('browser.ml.chat.sidebar', false);
user_pref('pdfjs.enableAltText', false);
user_pref('pdfjs.enableUpdatedAddImage', false);